Visible light enables catalytic formation of weak chemical bonds with molecular hydrogen

The synthesis of weak chemical bonds at or near thermodynamic potential is a fundamental challenge in chemistry, with applications ranging from catalysis to biology to energy science. Proton-coupled electron transfer using molecular hydrogen is an attractive strategy for synthesizing weak element–hydrogen bonds, but the intrinsic thermodynamics presents a challenge for reactivity. Here we describe the direct photocatalytic synthesis of extremely weak element–hydrogen bonds of metal amido and metal imido complexes, as well as organic compounds with bond dissociation free energies as low as 31 kcal mol−1. Key to this approach is the bifunctional behaviour of the chromophoric iridium hydride photocatalyst. Activation of molecular hydrogen occurs in the ground state and the resulting iridium hydride harvests visible light to enable spontaneous formation of weak chemical bonds near thermodynamic potential with no by-products. Photophysical and mechanistic studies corroborate radical-based reaction pathways and highlight the uniqueness of this photodriven approach in promoting new catalytic chemistry.